fiction/non/fiction

Novelists Nadia Hashimi and Helen Benedict join hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the mistakes American writers and culture made in depicting the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the wake of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and President Biden’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, have American fiction and film truly confronted the cost of these wars, especially to civilians overseas? In this episode, Benedict discusses the persistent and problematic glamorization of conflict, and reads from her 2017 novel, Wolf Season, which is about the Iraq War and its aftermath. Then, Hashimi speaks about centering Afghan voices in her fiction and reads from her novel Sparks Like Stars, which begins in 1978 Kabul during the Saur Revolution.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Selected readings:Nadia Hashimi Sparks Like Stars The Pearl that Broke Its Shell Helen Benedict Wolf Season Sand Queen Lonely Soldier “The Best Contemporary Iraqi Writing about War” (LitHub)  Others: The Storytellers of Empire, By Kamila Shamsie – Guernica Unbecoming by Anuradha Bhagwati   “A Former Marine Looks Back on Her Life in a Male-Dominated Military” by V.V. Ganeshananthan (New York Times) Elliot Ackerman and Anuradha Bhagwati on the Role of the Military in American Politics, Fiction/Non/Fiction, season two, episode 21 Charlie Wilson’s War Afghan Women are In Charge of Their Own Fate by Cheryl Benard “The Other Afghan Women” by Anand Gopal (New Yorker) “What Should a War Movie Do?” by Whitney Terrell (The New Republic) The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow Generation Kill by Evan Wright Karate Kid Matt Gallagher Teen Wolf Casualties of War directed by Brian De Palma The Messenger Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves and Miranda Seymour Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blasim The Taliban indoctrinates kids with jihadist textbooks paid for by the U.S. Washington Post, 2014 Sylvester Stallone in First Blood (1982) Katey Schultz Jesse Goolsby Cara Hoffman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor and publisher Brigid Hughes and writer Yiyun Li join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about reading War and Peace over the course of 85 days with others around the world. The unusually broad and lively Twitter conversation, organized in 2020 by A Public Space and led by Li, is captured in the newly published volume Tolstoy Together. In this episode, Li discusses her love of Russian novels and describes what it was like reading War and Peace in sections at the ends of newspapers when she was growing up in Beijing. Hughes, who read the book for the first time during this project, explains how the community of readers who contributed to the online book club made the experience special.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Selected readings:Yiyun Li Tolstoy Together Must I Go? Where Reasons End Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life Gold Boy, Emerald Girl A Thousand Years of Good Prayers Kinder Than Solitude The Vagrants  Brigid HughesA Public Space Others: The Translation Wars (The New Yorker) Her Private Space: On Brigid Hughes, Editor (LitHub) Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Lit Mags (and Likely More) (FnF episode) #APStogether : Events Infinite Happiness (originally published in A Public Space, by Jamel Brinkley) Cattle Haul (by Jesmyn Ward) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky   The Raid and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky   Matt Gallagher Dewaine Farria Alexandra Schwartz ZZ Packer   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Nawaaz Ahmed joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut novel, Radiant Fugitives, in this special live episode of the show held with Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, Washington. Ahmed’s book, set in California against the backdrop of Obama-era politics, explores how differences in faith and sexuality affect an Indian Muslim family when two estranged sisters—one a doctor more religiously observant than their parents, the other a political organizer who is lapsed, queer, recently divorced, and newly pregnant—reunite to support their ill mother. Ahmed also discusses his career shift from computer science to fiction, his decision to identify as a gay writer, and how these changes have strengthened his position as an activist.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.Selected readings: Nawaaz AhmedRadiant FugitivesOthers: The Quran Barack Obama Speeches “Endymion” by John Keats, Complete Poems “Yes We Can” Trikone   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poet Wayne Miller and novelist Elizabeth Gaffney join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss writing from the point of view of children before and during the pandemic. First, Miller discusses the unknowable interior lives of children, reads poems from his new collection We the Jury, and talks about connections to his essay “Learning to Write About Your Own Children.” Later, Gaffney reads an excerpt from her 2014 novel When the World Was Young, and discusses how the traumas her child narrator survives during WWII compare to the challenges children have faced during COVID-19.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This episode is produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Whitney Terrell.Selected readings:Wayne Miller We The Jury Learning to Write About Your Own Children, LitHub When Talking About Poetry Online Goes Very Wrong, LitHub Elizabeth Gaffney When the World Was Young Metropolis The 24-Hour Room  Others: Catcher in the Rye Family Ties The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright Kindred by Octavia Butler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While you wait for the next episoe of Fiction/Non/Fiction, we wanted to share a preview of a new podcast from our friends over at Wondery.Looking for a new podcast that's like Olivia Pope meets your favorite Ryan Murphy show? Or do you just love a good scandal? On True Love, a new fiction podcast from Wondery, you'll hear stories of scandalous flings, secret affairs, and the drama that ensues. TRUE LOVE brings these relationships to life through reimagined stories about love, lust and heartbreak. From secret celebrity hookups that play out under the cover of night to the web of lies it took to protect a high profile politician from revealing his secret life, each character finds themselves mixed up in every form of drama imaginable. This is just a preview of True Love, but you can listen to full episodes at wondery.fm/TL_FictionNonFiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed Slate books and culture columnist Laura Miller joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the ins and outs of being a critic. Miller discusses a recent piece about diversity and representation in audiobook narration. She also talks about reading for pleasure versus work, and why, when she’s not reviewing, she often finds herself listening to authors.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Laura Miller The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia “The People Who Voice Audiobooks with Diverse Characters are Squirming Right Now,” Slate “Enough With Literature as Self-Improvement!” Salon.com “The Dark History Behind the Year’s Bestselling Debut Novel,” Slate Others: “The Good Lieutenant by Whitney Terrell review – the Bush wars' best novel” by Charles Finch, The Guardian “Greetings From Polysyllabia” by Nandini Lal, Washington Post Wonderworks by Angus Fletcher Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of AmericanChildren's Literature by Leonard Marcus “Toil and Trouble” by Caleb Crain, New York Times Book Review “The Hideous Unknown of H.P. Lovecraft” by Charles Baxter, The New York Review “Reply to Charles Baxter’s ‘The Hideous Unknown of H. P. Lovecraft’” by S.T. Joshi “What Muriel Park Saw” by Parul Sehgal, The New Yorker “Philip Roth’s Revenge Fantasy,” by Laura Marsh, New Republic Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Zadie Smith Dwight Garner, New York Times Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Review of Books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the 100th episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan hand out the first-ever “Nonnie Awards” for the podcast’s standout moments from the past four years. Then author, poet, and playwright Jabari Asim reflects on how the discourse on racism and police brutality has shifted since last summer. Asim also reads from his upcoming novel Yonder, out in January 2022.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Jabari Asim Yonder (out January 2022, available for pre-order) Stop and Frisk We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival Mighty Justice Others: Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration by Ruben Jonathan Miller The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Watchmen (TV series) Fiction/Non/Fiction, June 2020: Black Stories Matter: Terrion Williamson and Jabari Asim on Narrative During the George Floyd Protests Fiction/Non/Fiction, February 2020: Coronavirus and Contagion: Laurie Chen and Richard Preston on Writing About the Spread of Disease Fiction/Non/Fiction, March 2019: C. Riley Snorton and T Fleischmann Talk Gender, Race, and Literature Fiction/Non/Fiction, September 2018: Garrard Conley and SJ Sindu on the Mainstreaming of Queer Identity Fiction/Non/Fiction, January 2018: Literary Color Lines: On Inclusion in Publishing Fiction/Non/Fiction, November 2017: We’re All Russian, Now: Talking Russian-American Politics, and the Enduring Appeal of Russian Literature   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Atlantic staff writer and author Adam Serwer joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how opposition to critical race theory aligns with our country’s historical resistance to acknowledging the truth and changing. Serwer reads from and discusses his new book The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, out this week.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Adam Serwer The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America “The Cruel Logic of the Republican Party, Before and After Trump,” New York Times “The Nationalist’s Delusion,” The Atlantic Others: Eric Foner “The Great Awokening” by Matt Yglesias, Vox The King of Kings County by Whitney Terrell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scholars Shir Alon and Joseph Farag join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how Palestinian and Israeli writers have written about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Farag talks about the evolution of the portrayal of the Palestinian self in literature throughout history, as well as some of the themes and writers discussed in his book, Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story. Alon explains how the unprocessed trauma of the history of massacre and expulsion of Palestinians seems to stage an appearance in Israeli literature every decade. She also talks about Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, and Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Shir Alon Static: Labor, Temporality, and Literary Form in Middle Eastern Modernisms (forthcoming book) “The Ongoing Nakba and the Grammar of History,” LA Review of Books “No One to See Here: Genres of Neutralization and the Ongoing Nakba” “Gendering the Arab-Jew: Feminism and Jewish Studies After Ella Shohat”  Joseph Farag Palestinian Literature in Exile Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: ‘Palestinian Literature and Film’  Others: Amos Oz  David Grossman Facing the Forests by A. B. Yehoshua Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar The Old New Land (Altneuland) by Theodor Herzl Men in the Sun, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, and All That's Left to You: A Novella and Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani  "A Lover from Palestine," "ID Card," and many others by Mahmoud Darwish The Ship by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra Wild Thorns and Passage to the Plaza by Sahar Khalifeh Eye of the Mirror and A Balcony Over the Fakihani by Liana Badr Nathan Alterman Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren Minor Detail by Adania Shibli Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom The Sound of Our Steps by Ronit Matalon Waltz with Bashir (film) by Ari Folman The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi  Divine Intervention, The Time that Remains, and It Must Be Heaven (films) by Elia Suleiman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor and publisher Sean McDonald and novelist Monica West join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how the “reopening” of the country is affecting authors and the publishing industry. First, McDonald, founder of MCD Books, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, talks about publishing in the pandemic, and how that experience may shape the industry going forward. Then, West reads from her debut novel, Revival Season, and shares what it’s been like to launch a book during (fingers crossed!) the pandemic’s waning days.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and don't miss our brand-new website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.Selected readings:Sean McDonald MCD x FSG The Electric Eel newsletter Monica WestRevival Season Others: “FSG Names McDonald Head of Experimental Imprint,” Publishers Weekly Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn Until Proven Safe by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley The Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson and Pau Gasol Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon F/N/F Season 3, Episode 10: Coronavirus and Contagion: Laurie Chen and Richard Preston on Writing About the Spread of Disease F/N/F Season 4, Episode 3: Monsters for President: Maria Dahvana Headley on Modern Mythmaking F/N/F Episode 26: Garrard Conley and SJ Sindu on the Mainstreaming of Queer Identity F/N/F Season 3, Episode 6: Rene Denfeld and Megan Phelps-Roper on Isolating the Language of Abuse in Politics, Gender Relations, and Sexual Abuse F/N/F Season 3, Episode 24: Summer Books Extravaganza: Margot Livesey and Jaswinder Bolina on Beach Reading When the Beach is Closed   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices